1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the submission of applications for credit. More particularly, the invention relates to a decision engine that facilitates the submission, receipt, and evaluation of an application for credit.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For those entities who apply for, offer, or broker credit in its various forms there are solutions available that allow one to obtain credit bureau data, parse it, and provide the data, e.g. an easy to read version of the data, create additional values from the original data, and return the reasons for the data. Company of San Rafael, Calif. offers a SEARCH product, which is an example of these solutions. There have been many components of the solution available as end-user solutions. There have also been some components available as on-line, e.g. Internet or direct dial up connection, solutions.
There are also scoring engine technologies that Fair, Isaac (hereinafter, interchangeably used with the term “Company”), HNC Software Inc. American Management Systems, Incorporated (AMS), Experian Information Solutions, Inc., and many other companies produce. These tools allow end-users to implement a scoring model in a software tool and return the score, the reasons for the score, and all the ancillary data back to the calling system. Company solutions include TRIAD™, ASAP™, StrategyWare®-ASAP™, CreditCenter™, Prosper, Prosper-ASAP, ScoreWare®, decision system, StrategyWare®, CreditDesk®, and SBSSSM-CreditDesk®.
Other systems can create additional complex characteristics, which are values derived from other data, such as determining the “open amount to buy on credit card balances”, calculated from the various lines of credit, their associated balances and their limits. Such systems can implement segmentation strategies, e.g. defining who in Northern California might want a car loan, execute rules, for example “Do not lend to people under the age of 18,” and implement multiple score models in series. These rules, strategies, models, and characteristics are established by the clients who use or implement the system, or their representatives. Company products in this space include a decision system and StrategyWare.
It would be advantageous to provide a solution that integrates all of the components of a credit application process, including access to and manipulation of credit bureau data, credit scoring, and credit decisioning into a single application service provider (ASP) platform.